Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional DD4 at school

I went this morning to watch DD4 at her Montessori School for a couple of hours. Let me describe what happened and then please tell me what do you think it is wrong.

So we enter her classroom and she goes to pick up a mat to play something on the floor. She thinked for a little and then chosed an activity where you have to arrange color tablets from darkest to lightest. She started to arrange the purple ones, but not in the right order. The teacher comes and asks her to put them in order and help her a bit with the purple one. Then she goes away and DD then proceeds to arrange the blue ones out of order. I ask her 'are they arranged from darkest to lightest?' and she tells me 'yes' even though I can see in her face she knows perfectly well that they are not. She knows the colors (in Spanish) since she was 2 yr old and I am pretty certain she can arrange them by hues (sp?). Yet she pretended not to be able. She took almost all the tablets out of the box but still show no interest to do the activity as required. I thought that there was very little point in doing something she does not want and that does not teach her anything new so I asked her 'do you really want to do it or not?'. She tells me no and that she wants to sit at the table where the cutting and pasting is done.
She had to wait a little because there can be only 6 children at the same time. In the meantime she started to climb the tables and jump and being quite restless.
While doing the color activity she was quite distracted, looking at what other kids were doing.

Once she was able to sit at the 'manualitys' (is this english?) table she was a much happy camper, but not an enthousiastic one. There was the teacher's aide helping the kids and directing them to do a 'schwartze Pete' ('black Peter' the helper of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) - kind of Dutch Santa. She tried to engage the help of the teacher's aide, asking her to do part of the cutting, etc.

In the meantime I just look around the classroom. Most of the activities are 'concrete' and hands-on. However, in reading and maths they can go quite 'deep' if they choose so. At the end of this two years (when they are 6) they should for example be able to count until 10 and do basic addition and substraction. However, there are activities to count until 100 and of course they could do larger addition and substraction.
The same goes with reading: they sould know letters and phonemas, but if they learn faster and want to actually read book, there are in the classroom.


I have the feeling that her problem is that in many aspects she has the knowledge of a 4-5 yr old but her mind operates like a 7ish yr old one.
If she knew how to read and count I would consider puting her in the next group, together with children aged 6 to 9.
But she does not and I wonder how the activities could be modified to appeal DD4.

When I usually pick her up she looks like a candle that is going off. There is no enthousiasm.

By the way, legally speaking I am only obliged to put her in school at age 5. This year I could still 'homeschool' her. But I do not know if this would be more confusing, first try school 3 months, then stoping and then going back 9 months later.

What do you think?

Good Job Isa!

How did you feel?
Accepting of the "Montessori - We Will Guide You!" in action, or furious? Accepting of the "please help me, I'm so weak" act, or furious?

Did you get a chance to look at her during reading and writing? Did the other children read the books or is that considered "social suicide" as my DS likes to say?

Can you put her in the old kid room for a trial?

Is she learning anything that you want her to learn, I mean besides "I have to be sneaking to have myself."

For the record. I think pulling her to homeschool could be confusing, but that would probably be worth it is she isn't getting a darn thing out of school. Does she enjoy the other children?

At this age, it's all about enjoyment. If they aren't having fun learning or socializing, I think that's a preety clear sign that it isn't a good fit.

Do they read aloud to the class? If so, is the level of book that they choose anywhere near appropriate? One big advantage of homeschooling in my eyes would be to read to her books that she wants to hear, and your old favorites. I read "Wrinkle in Time" to my DS at age 4 and he just loved it. I believe that's a safe way of "pushing" her in the reading direction. You certainly want her in that older class when she 'has' to be in school at 5.

Do they have Steiner/Waldorf schools in your area?

Regards,
Trinity

Confused.


Two of the kids were actually reading, and it was not at all 'social suicide'.
But DD4 does not even know the alphabet! She is learning it in two languages though...



I do not know, I would have to talk to the principal, but without knowing at least the letters and to count until 10 I do not think the principal is going to agree,

I just wanted to add that in the classroom she does not look bright or extra-intelligent.

I wish her to learn Dutch,not just the language but the culture as well. And of course numbers and letters at least.

I think that the problem is not so much lack of new things to learn, but that she thinks very different from typical 4 yrs old kids.


yes and no... she does enjoy the company of the other girls and has been invited to their house a couple of times and she has invited two of them to our house. So this is ok. BUT, I can see how the pretend play of the other kids is much simpler than the one of DD. For example, she takes up to 50 little figures (warriors, princeses, animals, horses...) and organize them in a set up like a theather, with quite a story and several sub-stories and interactions btw the differents characters. I honestly do not see her classmates doing this. So at the end of the visit DD is still missing something. When she plays with the friend she simplifies her game.


The problem is that I read her in Spanish. And lately I do not have many oportunities to read because DS comes to 'play' and to 'read' ... And no, he does not sleep either. And when she leaves DD and me in peace, then he is trying to get to some interesting places like inside the chimeny or on top of the bookshelf.

Argh! I miss my mom to give me a hand.



No that I know of. What is their philosophy?

What I like of the Montessori is the mixed age groups and that you can learn at your own pace. In theory as well...


Ditto!

I just wanted to add that the activity DD chosed, she did it once with the teacher.
I think she choosed it because either she hope that she would have again interaction with the teacher or because she thinks that this is what is expected of her.

The teacher says that she wants DD to make the activity (or any other) on her own at least once, but DD always refused and pretends she cannot.

Isa,
If you can say without revealing too much, I'm going to need a scorecard here.
Your Daughter speakes Dutch in school, and they read stories in Spanish. Do they use Spanish throughout the day? Are the stories "Chapter Books" or "See Dick run?" Can you get ahold of "audiobooks" in your Primary Language? Then you and DD and DS could snuggle during reading time.

What do you and other adults speak at home?

Do she know any letters in either languge (which ones?)
Does the school notice the depth of her play? Is it worth making a video of one of her productions to show them, or at least keep as a keepsake.

Has it already been suggested to check her vision, both acuity and muscle control? Does she seem to be learning the letters when the teachers teach them? Does she do better when you do it verbally? "Dear, what makes the "ffff" sound?" I have heard that for Bilingual kids they start slower and catch up all at once.

This is a tough one. How does she feel about going to school? If you keep her home, could you hire a tutor to be her friend and help with the letters?

Sincerely,
Trinity

Hi,

I am Spanish, my husband is German and we live in The Netherlands. At home, I speak Spanish to DD and DS and DH speaks to them in German.
DH and me speak English. Well, I do espeak espanglish

DD's school is all in dutch.

more later, now I have to go

((Off Topic Alert))

Hola Isa!
I espeak espanglish tambien. ((grande smile))
Are there any favorita writers about gifted who are primo-ly writing in Spanish?

I'm a native english speaker, but my Mother was very into using Latin based words instead of the Anglo-Saxon words. When I started my current job, where espanglish is the main language, I felt so 'at home' because I could stop translating my mental "Latin-based English" into "Angle-Saxon-based English" and just shift my prononciation a bit. I could stop worrying that if I used the first word that came to mind I would sound pretensious. What a treat! I guess this belongs under "Gifted Baggage."

Ok, back to Topic, DD4.
golly! She is not bilingual - She is Trilingual. She is talking Dutch to her friends? (I'll bet she knows some English words also - make that Quatralingual, no?) Good for her! What does she think about all the talking? Does she have words for how each groups talks? I know nothing about this, but there must be an internet group of "raising multilingual children" out there, some experts would be nice also!

Perhaps if she isn't talking about it, you could get her talking about the whole thing by asking about this in relation to her little brother. What "taling" does he understand best? Which of his words belong to which "talking" - does she think he will learn more Spanish first or more Dutch?

I would ask to sit down with the school and request that she be allowed to spend some time with the older kids and see if that helps. An alternative is to keep her home longer, but tell me, are you trying to teach her to read in Dutch? Is that her strongest language?

Smiles,
Trinity

Hi Isa,
My dd is in a two-way immersion program in the US. One thing that I have learned having my child in that program is that children learn the process of how to read once. After that they simply apply the process to a different language. If your daughter is stronger in Spanish, you may want to consider homeschooling her for a few months to focus on learning to read in Spanish. My dd could already read in English before beginning her education in Spanish. This made learning Spanish easier especially since Spanish is a more phonetically consistent language. Spanish is probably one of the easiest languages to learn to read in because of the consistency. I am not familiar with German or Dutch, but English is a difficult language in which to teach reading because there are so many exceptions to the rules and it includes so many words from other languages.

Summer

Now that boths DD and DS are sleeping (fingers crossed) I can type a litte

I do not think that the teacher realises at all how intelligent DD is. I think she thinks DD is bright, but she obviously lacks experience with HG kids. She is very well meaning and speaks in terms of 'understanding DD' not in 'fitting in' so I am hopeful that I can educate her. The problem is that I do not know either how and why DDs mind works.

About the deepness of her pretend play, they cannot see it because they do not have so many toys and none of these figures.
(http://www.papo-france.com/Collection.asp)
Besides, when she is with other kids she lowers the complexity, or she plays one her own and everything happens in her head.

About reading: all the literature in bilingual education and all the bilingual people I know point to sequential learning to read. First in one language and then apply the process to the next. However, both DH have the gut feeling that this would not apply to DD and that she would learn all four languages at the same time. As times passes this is being confirmed. For example I have her full attention when I explain to her that each language uses the same letters but the names and the sound they make are different from one language to the other.

She does by the way have very poor eye tracking, and I start to think that this is interfering with the reading.

But maybe Texas, you are right and I should push a little with the eSpanish.
At least there I do not have accent and my grammar is impecable

Isa,
What language does she speak "best?" Has her Dutch caught up to her Spanish and German? Can you tell if she thinks in a particular language? Are the books they read in class in Dutch, and what level are they? Deep enough to be interesting?

At our daycare, when DS was 3 or 4, there was a big deal made of "Dr. Suess Week" - and every day the parents came and read a story. Of course I let DS choose, and he chose "Horton Hears a Who." Every verse I read, he sat on my lap and then "translated" the hard words for his classmates. He used the same tone of voice I used when translating for him. I felt exposed and mortified. I though my son was being bossy and innapropriate. I looked for the teachers for cues, thinking to guide my DS to "shut up." The teachers though it was wonderful that DS was "kind enough" to translate for his friends. The other kids sat quietly, without a glimmer behind the eyes of any kind. ((shake)) I was still in denial about his GT, my GT, and my internal alarm system was going off at full blast. If this keeps up - we are going to be discovered as different and hated! Nothing seemed to change, but I was sweating! Afterwards the teacher thanked me, and it slipped out in conversation that the other parents had read, "Hop on Pop" "One Fish, Two Fish." It just didn't make sense to me that a parent would "waste" time reading such a simple book to a child.

Now I understand that the other parents were naturally responding to who their child is, just as I was responding to who my child was.

Hope that helps,
Trinity